The purpose of the Clinical core is to evaluate and carefully diagnose a population of patients with Alzheimer's disease, and other dementias, together with normal age-matched control subjects. Standard diagnostic criteria of DSM-III-R will be used for the diagnosis of dementia with NINCD/ADRDA criteria applied for the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. Severity of dementia will be graded according to Washington University criteria. Information will be gathered using the CERAD format and the CAMDEX structured interview. A particular emphasis will be to recruit and involve subjects of Afro- American ancestry. The use of CAMDEX or CERAD has not been validated in this population, so determination of these instruments' reliability will be one of our initial tasks. An emphasis will also be given to identifying patients with familial Alzheimer's disease, especially Afro-American kindreds, which have been rarely studied. Identification of Afro-American pedigrees for genetic linkage studies should be useful in determining the racial origin of the Alzheimer's disease gene. The Clinical Core will facilitate the development of new diagnostic algorithms, risk factor analysis instruments, neuroimaging studies, as well as other future pilot studies for improved assessment of dementia subjects and future research.